GCL 2.6.5 RELEASE NOTES

The GCL team is happy to announce the release of version 2.6.5, the latest achievement in the 'stable' series. This release is a minor modification to version 2.6.4. From the changelog:

• New gmp_wrappers.{c,h} files that prevent all GBC within gmp, obviating the need for gmp patches and a local gmp configure. FIXME -- extend to all gmp functions in a systematic way, and write header information for future use in the compiler, making sure that plt.c carries the needed gmp symbols at this point
• dynsysgmp on by default; configure backs off to local gmp configure and build automatically if needed either because gmp not present or patched symbols are needed
• autodetect and set the _start symbol when using gprof
• Fix (setf (get ...) ...) return bug when interpreted
• Fix overwrite end of sgc_type_map bug
• Versioned depends on binutils-dev manually installed by Debian build process

As an example of the recent performance enhancements in GCL, Matt Kaufmann, one of the ACL2 co-authors, reports significantly improved timings for the ACL2 regression suite. When ACL2 2.8 was released, GCL was in pre-release mode for 2.6.2, and provided the following regression suite timings as reported on http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/v2-8/installation.html:

• Gnu Common Lisp (GCL), Version 2.6.1-34 (unreleased): 11005.520u 99.530s 3:10:45.33 97.0% 0+0k 0+0io 9555249pf+0w
• Allegro Common Lisp, Version 6.2: 12289.340u 134.340s 3:35:22.82 96.1% 0+0k 0+0io 9540266pf+0w
• CMU Common Lisp (CMUCL), Version 18e: 11303.590u 246.730s 3:29:11.40 92.0% 0+0k 0+0io 8906120pf+0w
• Lispworks Common Lisp, Version 4.2.7: [No time available, but at one time was tested at about 72% slower than GCL.]
• CLISP, Version 2.33:* 52591u 611s 15:31 98% Times above for CLISP are approximate [you don't want to know...]

Since version 2.6.3, a reasonably comparable calculation on the same machine takes about 7800 user seconds (on a slightly updated ACL2). For the latest information, capabilities, and status of GCL stable, please see the 2.6.2 release notes here